Four Questions Before You Buy

They're the sexiest thing to come along since ... well, since I can't remember when. But which one to get? Let's try to narrow down the choices a bit.

1. What do you watch?
If you're a serious movie watcher, I generally recommend plasma for its lower black level. On the other hand, LCD has higher resolution, rendering fine detail better. I tend to favor better black level in this case, especially since modern plasmas often look subjectively quite good in the detail department.

If your viewing habits tend toward broadcast TV or you plan to play lots of video games on your new flat panel, LCD is the way to go. Video games have many static elements (score boxes, unmoving scenes, and so on) that can leave burn-in ghosts on plasmas, sometimes after only a few hours. The same goes for some TV shows, especially news channels with a ticker running across the bottom of the screen. The problem is compounded if you watch a lot of 4:3 TV; after a surprisingly short time, an outline of the 4:3 window can be seen on the plasma's screen. Many plasmas provide a "wipe" function that floods the screen with white to exorcize the ghosts, but the longer they remain on the screen, the harder it is to completely erase them.

If you tend to watch sports or other fast-action material and you've decided on an LCD panel, make sure its response time is 8 milliseconds or less. This avoids the problem of motion lag that can plague LCDs.

2. Lots of people or just a few people watching?
If you often host a large gathering around the electronic campfire, plasma is a better bet with its wider effective viewing angle. If you mostly fly solo or cozy up to your partner for an evening's video entertainment, either technology will work fine.

3. How much do you want to spend?
Inch for inch, LCDs are generally more expensive than plasmas, though this gap is closing fast. Otherwise, perhaps the most obvious factor is screen size: the larger the screen, the more expensive the set, especially within one manufacturer's product line. Features also play an important role: higher resolution, more inputs, HD tuners, even cabinetry all affect the price. As you can see in the accompanying table, you can spend as little as $900 for a 32-inch LCD to nearly $8000 for a high-end 42-inch plasma. Expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 to $4000 for a good midline flat panel in the 32- to 42-inch size range.

4. What do you know about installation?
Virtually all LCD and plasma flat panels come with table-top stands -- some even swivel. This makes them easy to install: find a convenient table and place the panel on it.

Of course, most flat-panel buyers dream of mounting their new purchase on the wall, which is actually quite tricky. Wall-mounting should be done by someone who knows what they're doing in terms of firmly affixing the mounting hardware to wall studs.

Then there's the issue of cabling -- the minimum requirement is a power cord and one video cable, probably HDMI, assuming you have a processor or AVR that converts all video signals to HDMI. If not, you'll probably have to connect HDMI and component-video cables, and possibly S-video or even (ugh!) composite, depending on your sources.

No one wants to see unsightly cables dangling from their wall-mounted flat panel. Unfortunately, there's no getting around this unless you open up the wall and run the cables inside before closing it back up. This looks great, but it's hell if you have to move the panel later.

Some flat panels have jack packs with connectors that face backward, which makes it difficult to connect cables to a wall-mounted unit, unless the cables are routed inside the wall. Others have some or all of their connectors facing downward, which makes external cable routing much easier, though heavy, high-end HDMI cables have a tendency to fall out in this configuration.

Now that you're armed with some basic knowledge, it's time to go forth and find the flat panel of your dreams. Happy hunting!

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